


little ones

by awkwardspaceturtle (CastelloFlare)



Series: tiny sheiths [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Orphanage, Courtship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CastelloFlare/pseuds/awkwardspaceturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you want to go on a date with me?”</p><p>The question was randomly thrown; they were all back inside the building now, in the Rainbow Room. It was Coloring Time, and everyone was entitled to one box of crayons each.</p><p>“What’s that?” Keith asked candidly, his fingers wildly scratching a red crayon on the surface of paper. He was drawing a bug he’d found earlier in the day – a ladybug, he’d been told, which he found peculiar, because how were the adults <em>sure</em> that the bug was, in fact, a lady? “Is that a car?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	little ones

**Author's Note:**

> so i heard there was sheith week on twitter and i just had to  
> so i guess this is day1: first date?? i hope i am doing this right  
> anyways, thank you for clicking on this! i hope you enjoy

 “I gotta run, got a _date_ in half an hour,” the beautiful blond woman said. She tightly clasped the hands of the Sister in her soft slender fingers, a wide tender smile on her face. “I’ll come visit again.”

“See you soon, Agatha,” Sister April smiled back. Shiro noted how similar the two women looked – hair the same shade of strawberry blond, the same upturned nose and kind assuring smile – they were probably siblings, like some of the other kids were at the orphanage.

When the woman named Agatha had gone, Shiro tipped his head to look up at Sister April, and asked, “What’s a _date_?”

Above him, the Sister looked surprised, albeit not unpleasantly, at the question. When she didn’t give him an answer immediately, Shiro tilted his head and continued, “Is she going to get a calendar?”

“Oh, dearest, no,” Sister April giggled and knelt down in front of him. Shiro always liked the way she smelled – like grass after a rain. “A date is when two people who like each other spend time together.”

Shiro pondered over this, mouthing the words as if to taste them on his own lips to grasp their meaning. Then he looked out the window into the yard in the middle of the compound, where the playground and the trees and all the children were gathered with the other Sisters, big and little bodies milling about or playing under the warm heat of the sun. A little boy with unruly hair was sitting under the biggest tree, his eyes staring back at Shiro through the window.

Sister April, like everybody else understood this as the unspoken yet accepted part of the norm – Little Keith was always waiting for Little Shiro.

“Sister,” Shiro began, his eyes not drifting away from the window. “If I always spend time together with the person I like, does that mean we’re always on a date?”

Sister April blinked twice, the smile not leaving her face, but in her mind she was thinking of how to place an answer that would be easily absorbed by a six year-old. Shiro finally turned to her, his eyes sparkling and eager.

“A date isn’t that simple, Shiro,” she said. “You’ll have to ask the other person if they want to spend time with you, and they’ll have to agree for it to become a date.”

This notion was new to the young child before her. His eyebrows drew up in the middle, scrunching his adorable face into an expression of mixed wonder and doubt – doubt because he found an existing truth in his life he needed to question.

“Why do I have to ask them if we’re already always together?”

“Because, little one, asking someone to go on a date with you is not just saying you want to spend time with them. It’s also asking them if they like you in the same way that you like them,” Sister April smiled. Inwardly she wondered if she was making the right call answering his questions instead of kindly dismissing him to join the others to play, but she knew Little Shiro – always a bright kid, always the intuitive one.

“I think… I think I understand, Sister April,” he beamed after a moment of contemplating her answers. “Thank you.”

And with that, he scurried off towards the door to the yard; a little shadow underneath the trees suddenly rose from a sitting position in sudden alertness and anticipation at Shiro’s arrival.

 

 

“Do you want to go on a date with me?”

The question was randomly thrown; they were all back inside the building now, in the Rainbow Room. It was Coloring Time, and everyone was entitled to one box of crayons each.

“What’s that?” Keith asked candidly, his fingers wildly scratching a red crayon on the surface of paper. He was drawing a bug he’d found earlier in the day – a ladybug, he’d been told, which he found peculiar, because how were the adults _sure_ that the bug was, in fact, a lady? “Is that a car?”

Shiro laughed – a crisp, delightful sound Keith always liked – and with it, his shoulders vibrated softly, rocking the table a little, yet Keith didn’t mind.

“No,” Shiro said. “Sister April said it’s when two people who like each other spend time together.”

“Then isn’t this a date?” Keith asked; a genuine question, not a rhetorical one, a query born of  the innocence and naivety of a five-and-a-half year-old.

“No, she said I first need to know if you like me the same way I like you,” Shiro said, and his attention was now fully onto Keith, his small hands resting on the table, each still grasping purple and black crayons.

“Well, I do like Shiro,” Keith said, eyes also off his own work and locked with Shiro’s brown ones.

“Great,” Shiro beamed all the way to his ears, and Keith swore he might have just flown close to the sun.

 

 

Nothing really changed – the pair of them went about their usual activities, played with the other kids, looked for bugs around the bushes and  followed ant trails like loyal observers together – the whole notion of the word “date” lost in the recesses of their young minds.

Until the day Libby kissed Kurt smack on the lips.

There were no ‘Little’s attached to their names anymore; they were the older kids, aged eight to ten. The other older kids spared no time in teasing and taunting them – _eww they’re dating_ , _you’re going to get the cooties!_ Laughter, laughter, more laughter.

The Sisters were quick in settling the children down, but in those few minutes, Little Keith had seen it, felt it – the embarrassment and awkwardness of being the center of attention.

 

 

They both sat, the pair of them under the shade of the tallest tree in the yard, watching the ants walk in a straight line on the dirt.

Keith tensed, then his hand loosened from Shiro’s.

Then, quietly:

“I can’t go on dates with Shiro anymore.”

The usual smile from Shiro’s face disappeared, and was replaced by the same expression he always had when he did not understand something that was too complex for his young mind to fathom.

“Why?” he said, his voice a little higher with emotion. It was the first time Keith had said something like this, like something had ended permanently, had finished – and in the face of such finality, Shiro did not know how to respond, how to exactly feel. Later on in his life, he’d look back at this as his first real heartbreak. But now, there was only this moment, and only one reason he could think of for the date to end. “You don’t like me the way I like you anymore?”

“No!”Keith gasped, and turned to face Shiro, his face white, as if the prospect of ever _not liking_ Shiro was impossible, forbidden, even. “I like Shiro. I’ll _always_ like Shiro.”

“Then, why?” Shiro made to hold Keith’s hand again, but Keith held his back.

“…Because, the cooties…” Keith squeaked. He wasn’t even sure what the word meant – none of the Littles really did – but this unknown thing made him nervous. “And the Big Ones – they’ll laugh at us.”

“But they’ve done nothing this whole time.”

“They will when they see you drinking from my mouth,” Keith said, and the thought sent waves of heat across his face. “Or when _I_ drink from your mouth. Like Kurt and Libby.”

They were silent once again. They still sat side by side, yet their hands didn’t find each other.

“Can I date you again?” Shiro said, eyes cast on the ground.

“Maybe if we’re older,” Keith said. “Older than the Big Ones.”

“When will that be?”

Keith pondered over this – they did not really have any concept of the world ‘old’, aside from getting taller and taller. He stared out onto the yard, eyes raking on the clusters of kids, the playgrounds, the trees. Then, he spoke.

“Maybe when you’re taller than _this_ tree.”

“Can I really get taller than this?” Shiro looked up at the thick canopy of leaves high above them. This was the tallest one in the yard, Keith’s favorite tree.

“If you want to date again, yeah,” Keith said.

 

 

Shiro spent all night tossing in his bed, thinking. The Sisters were very much older than the Big Ones, and yet they were strangely shorter compared to the trees. How much longer would it take _him_ to outgrow that tree? When he gets twice _their_ age?

He couldn’t wait.

The next day, Little Shiro, six years old and made of short stout limbs and hard determination, climbed the tree.

 

 

Shiro woke up, and he remembered falling.

He fell, not a few feet from the trunk, yet he scarred himself nonetheless – a long straight cut right on his nose, in the middle of his face – proof of his naiveté and the recklessness of youth. Despite himself, he chuckled, the memory from more than ten years ago a welcome and pleasant one.

Sensing the rumble on his chest, the body on top of him also stirred, a mess of hair jostling on his broad chest. They had fallen asleep like that under the shade in the park, the pair of them – Keith lying snugly on top of him, Shiro’s arms draped over his back to keep him in place.

“What time is it?” Keith’s muffled voice came. He still had his face buried in the bulk of Shiro’s chest, unwilling to move.

“It’s almost 6PM,” Shiro said after one glance on his watch. “We can always eat outside if you don’t wanna catch the cafeteria.”

“Mm,” Keith groaned in response. It was a lazy kind of afternoon, and neither of them really wanted to get up from their comfortable position.

“What were you dreaming about?” Keith asked suddenly, still not looking up from where he made a pillow of Shiro’s melons.

“Hm?”

“You were chuckling just a while ago. When you woke.”

“Ah,” Shiro said, tipping his head back on the grass. The tree they had taken shade in looked quite similar to the one back in the orphanage yard. Maybe that was why he had dreamed what he dreamed. “I was just wondering if you went out with me because you felt guilty about me climbing that tree to win you back.”

Keith’s head sprang up from where he lay on Shiro’s body, his eyes wild with disbelief and worry and realization.

“ _Takashi Shirogane_ , I—” he began defiantly, but another low rumble from deep within Shiro’s chest stopped him.

“I’m sorry, I was just messing with you,” Shiro smiled, and his hands wound tighter around Keith’s waist. Then with the playful glint still present in his eyes, he said, “Drink from my mouth?”

Keith rolled his eyes and groaned theatrically; Shiro just wouldn’t let go of the past.

“It’s called ‘ _kissing_ ’, you idiot,” he said, but he closed the distance between them and placed his mouth against Shiro’s anyway, and Shiro could feel Keith’s lips curving upward into a smile when their faces pressed close together.

**Author's Note:**

> if you wanna talk sheith, feel free to hmu on tumblr, this is the sappy procrastinator @eruriholic  
> thank you for reading!


End file.
